2. Publicism
Indirect speech acts are widely used in publicistic works
when the speaker or the writer aims at convincing the
interlocutor of something. A quotation from an article published
by “The Times” dated June 12, 1999, exemplifies this:
“The claim that the Earl of Oxford, or Bacon, or any other
grandee must have written “Shakespeare” seems to be born largely
of a snobbish conviction that a provincial grammar-school boy
could not have produced that corpus of world masterpieces. Yet
outstanding literary achievement is more likely to come from such
a background than any other.
With the exception of Byron and Shelley, all our greatest
writers have been middle-class, and most of them provincials. If
Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker’s son, could re-create the worlds
of Edward II and Tamburlaine, why should not a Stratford glover’s
son depict courtly life at large? The argument that it would take
an aristocrat to know how royalty behaved and thought ignores the
imaginative power of well-read genius.”
The journalist’s argument “The claim … seems to be born
largely of a snobbish conviction that a provincial grammar school
boy could not have produced that corpus of world masterpieces.”
contains two speech acts. On the one hand, it is a representative
giving a negative, critical appraisal. On the other hand, it is
an indirect expressive (a protest).
The argument “If Marlowe, a Canterbury shoemaker’s son,
could re-create the worlds of Edward II and Tamburlaine, why
should not a Stratford glover’s son depict courtly life at
large?” is another indirect speech act. Formally, it is a
question, but in essence it is an indirect statement (a
representative).
Another article in “The Times” of November 13, 1999 is
devoted to the safety of flights of private airplanes:
“…Their central, and only, point is not an argument but a
prejudice - that safety and private sector are incompatible. This
is obviously wrong, as the impressive history of this country's
airlines and airports makes plain”.
The utterance “It's not an argument, but a predjudice -
that safety and private sector are incompatible” is a
representative, but on the other hand, the author protests
against the point of view taken by his opponents, and this
utterance can also be regarded as an indirect expressive.
Evidently, indirect speech acts influence the quality of
argumentation, and that is crucial for publicism. They amplify
the speaker’s impact upon the hearers’ feelings and emotions.
3. Advertising
Indirect speech acts are widely used in advertising.
Advertisements can perform various literal functions combining
representatives (information on the product), commissives (safety
or quality guarantee), expressives (admiration for the product),
etc. But the pragmatic focus of any advertisement is always a
directive: “Buy it now!”
For example, the advertisement: “You’ll see Tefal in
action! Purchasing the new model, you get a present!” is a
directive disguised as a commissive (a promise). Often the
implication is biased from the product to its potential user,
like in the slogan: “L’Oreal, Paris. Because I’m worth it” (a
directive camouflaged as a representative).
4. Anecdotes
Indirect speech acts are often the heart of an anecdote
[17]: Two businessmen made a fortune by means of forgery and were
doing their best to be considered aristocrats. They even had
their portraits painted by the most famous and “expensive”
artist. The portraits were first displayed at a grand rout. The
businessmen brought the most influential critic to the portraits
hoping to hear the words of admiration and compliments. The
critic stared at the portraits for a while, then shook his head
as if something important were missing and asked pointing at the
space between the portraits: “And where is the Savior?”
The implication of the question is unambiguous: Jesus
Christ between the two robbers. The critic made up a complicated
indirect speech act: he disguised an evaluative representative:
“You are two scoundrels, of that I am sure” as a question “And
where is the Savior?”
Anecdotes often play with a wrong understanding of the
speaker’s illocutionary point by the hearer, for example:
Someone knocks at the window of a peasant’s house at 3
a.m.:
- Hey, you need any firewood?
- No, go away, I am sleeping.
In the morning, the peasant saw that all the firewood
disappeared from his shed.
In this funny story the peasant took the question for an
offer, and his interlocutor (hardly by mistake) took the refusal
as the answer.
7. INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS AS A YARDSTICK OF COMMUNICATIVE
MATURITY AND MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING
“Нам
не дано предугадать, как слово
наше отзовется”.
Ф.Тютчев
Understanding of indirect speech acts is not a man’s
inborn ability. Younger children whose communicational skills are
not yet well developed perceive only one illocutionary force of a
speech act, the one deducible from the syntactic form of an
utterance. For instance, once my four-year-old son was carrying
home a paintbrush I just bought for him. On our way home he often
dropped it. I said: “You let your brush fall a hundred times!”
meaning a directive: “Be more careful!” The boy, however, took my
words literally and replied: “Of course not, mom. I dropped it
only six times!”
Here is another example of communicational immaturity. A
boy of seven phones to his mother’s office:
- I’d like to speak to Mrs. Jones, please.
- She is out. Please call back in a few minutes.
- OK.
The boy reacted to the utterance “Please call back in a few
minutes” as to a request while the communicative situation
required answering “Thank you” (for advice) instead of “OK”.
If the hearer does not recognize the speaker’s
communicative intentions, a communicative failure will follow.
For example, asking, “Where is the department store?” one may
hear: “The department store is closed” in a situation when one
needs the department store as an orienting point.
Quite often a question is understood as a reproach, e.g.
- Why didn’t you invite him?
- Invite him yourself if you want to.
- I do not want to invite him. I am just asking.
Surprise can be taken for distrust:
- Does it really cost that much?
- Don’t you believe me?
Sociolinguistic research shows that everywhere in the
civilized world women tend to use more indirect speech acts than
men. Educated people, regardless of their sex, prefer indirect
speech acts to direct ones. Correct understanding of indirect
speech acts by an adult is an index of his or her sanity [9,90].
On balance, the question How to do things with words?
cannot be answered easily and unambiguously: just build your
utterance in accordance with certain rules or use one of the
“moulds”, and you will avoid a communication failure.
A chasm of incomplete understanding always separates
communicants, even most intimate ones, and indirect speech acts
often make it deeper. Yet, only words can bridge the chasm
conducting the thought from one shore to the other. Every time
the bridge is to be built from scratch, and choosing linguistic
means, the interactants must take into account the distance, the
“weather” conditions, the previous mistakes, both their own and
other people’s, and “the weight” of the thought to be conveyed.
Finally, the thought is worded and set off, but we can only guess
what awaits it on the other shore. We are helpless there, and our
thought is now in the hearer’s power.
CONCLUSIONS
Correspondence between the syntactic form of an utterance
and its pragmatic function is not always 1:1. The same syntactic
form can express various communicative intentions. On the other
hand, to express a communicative intention we can use a variety
of linguistic means. Therefore, in speech there are many
constructions used to express not the meaning fixed by the system
of language, but a secondary meaning that is conventional or
appears in a particular context. Speech acts made up by means of
such constructions are indirect. In indirect speech acts, the
speaker conveys the non-literal as well as the literal meaning,
and an apparently simple utterance may, in its implications,
count for much more. Hence, it is very important to study not
only the structure of a grammatical or lexical unit and its
meaning in the system of language, but also the pragmatic context
shaping its functioning in communication.
A number of theories try to explain why we generate
indirect speech acts and how we discover them in each other’s
speech. The inference theory brought forward by John Searle
claims that we first perceive the literal meaning of the
utterance and find some indication that the literal meaning is
inadequate. Having done that, we derive the relevant indirect
force from the literal meaning and context.
Another line of explanation developed by Jerrold Sadock is
that indirect speech acts are expressions based on an idiomatic
